this is just to say: Diminished Capacity

19 August 2010

Diminished Capacity

Sometimes, I am also full of great rage.

I only have, after today, 1 more day of swimming left at the TC pool (before they close for the "summer" and reopen with the new semester at which point school will have started for me and I can start using the Columbia pool again).

It's extremely aggravating when I go to workout and all the slow swimmers decide not only to remain in the only FAST LANE in the pool, but that they also proceed to do the following:

Enter the fast lane halfway into the lane and just start swimming without notifying the 2 other swimmers in the lane that they've entered. This nearly results in a swimmer's collision. Not cool.
Even though they are acutely aware that they are slower than the actual "fast" swimmer in the lane, they never stop at the end of the lane for the faster swimmer to pass. EVER. As a result, the swimmers of this lane now have to move at the pace of these idiots (thus, no longer a FAST LANE) since everyone is too self-absorbed in their own crap to be considerate.

No, I didn't want to drown anyone, but I did want to tell the lifeguard that he was worthless, and I did want to tell that one bitch in the locker room that there really wasn't enough eyeliner raccooned around her eyeballs.

I really hate it when my workouts are compromised by inconsiderate swimmers. We're sharing the pool! I did everything I could to adhere to pool etiquette!

Mostly, in the end, it just makes me sad. I can't wait to return to the Olympic sized Columbia pool since there are so many lanes and only serious swimmers (for the most part). This generally means tons of Speedos and super super fast swimmers. Intimidating? Yes, but a great workout for me. I win!

Today, I lost.

But it's okay--I've started cycling to work (2 bridges each way), and it amounts to about 1.5 hours of intense cycling daily! But there really isn't a safe way for me to ride (versus the greenway along the Hudson I had previously been using). So I really hope that I do not die by car, bus, or cab. I think it might happen, and I try not to wish for it.

from "Euphoria," by Sina Queyras

1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age
Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as
November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant
As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,
Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco
Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your
Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment
Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery
Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,
My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones
Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves
Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing
Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,
You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching
The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways
In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness
Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all
Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,
You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton
Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless
Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe
All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying
Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who
Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or
The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?
Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes
I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes
Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of
Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera
Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all
The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,
Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:
We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor
Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse
Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red
Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,
My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

19 August 2010

Diminished Capacity

(underbed stor)age